NPI poll finds 69% of Washingtonians favor life in prison alternatives to the death penalty

An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans would rather send con­vict­ed mur­der­ers to prison for life than exe­cute them, a recent poll com­mis­sioned by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has found.

A total of 69% of respon­dents sur­veyed said they pre­ferred one of three life in prison alter­na­tives to just 24% who said they pre­ferred the death penalty.

8% said they were not sure.

This sig­nif­i­cant find­ing sug­gests that a con­sen­sus is build­ing among the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State for a sore­ly need­ed human rights and crim­i­nal jus­tice reform. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans don’t need to be con­vinced that replac­ing the death penal­ty with life in prison alter­na­tives makes sense… it’s what they already believe.

Here is the ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION:

Of the fol­low­ing list of choic­es, which pun­ish­ment do you pre­fer for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der: life in prison with NO pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, life in prison with NO pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole and a require­ment to work in prison and pay resti­tu­tion to the vic­tims, life in prison with a pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after at least forty years, or the death penalty?

ANSWERS:

• Pre­fer Life In Prison… (69% total) 
  • … With No Pos­si­bil­i­ty Of Parole: 10%
  • … With No Pos­si­bil­i­ty Of Parole And A Require­ment To Work in Prison And Pay Resti­tu­tion To The Vic­tims: 46%
  • … With A Pos­si­bil­i­ty Of Parole After At Least Forty Years: 13%
• Pre­fer The Death Penal­ty: 24%
• Not Sure: 8%

Our sur­vey of six hun­dred and sev­en­ty-five like­ly 2018 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field May 22nd-23rd, 2018. The sur­vey used a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines and online inter­views of cell phone only respon­dents. The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.8% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

What we found most strik­ing about the respons­es were that not a sin­gle sub­sam­ple with­in the sur­vey favored the death penal­ty… not even Don­ald Trump vot­ers.

(Trump vot­ers favor life in prison by the slimmest of mar­gins: 48% of them picked one of the three alter­na­tives, while 46% want to keep the death penalty.)

What this tells us is that there is broad agree­ment across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum for get­ting rid of the prac­tice of putting con­vict­ed mur­ders to death.

82% of those iden­ti­fy­ing as Democ­rats in our poll select­ed one of the life in prison alter­na­tives, joined by 63% of those iden­ti­fy­ing as inde­pen­dents and sup­port­ers of a minor par­ty, plus 54% of those iden­ti­fy­ing as Republicans.

There are ample rea­sons to oppose the death penal­ty.

It does­n’t deter crime, it’s actu­al­ly cheap­er to incar­cer­ate mur­der­ers than it is to exe­cute them, and it’s a prac­tice that has been end­ed in every oth­er devel­oped coun­try except for the Unit­ed States… not to men­tion many devel­op­ing countries.

But per­haps the best rea­son of all to abol­ish the death penal­ty is that it is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and unjust. Our courts are sim­ply not infal­li­ble. Pros­e­cu­tors make mis­takes. Juries make mis­takes. Judges make mis­takes. A per­son who is inno­cent can be accused, tried, and exe­cut­ed for a mur­der they did not commit.

Since we can­not elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error from our judi­cial sys­tem, we must elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty that an inno­cent per­son will be put to death by get­ting rid of the death penal­ty once and for all — both here in Wash­ing­ton and elsewhere.

At NPI, we believe that all peo­ple have a right to live. Life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness are the ideals that this coun­try was found­ed on, with life being the first. Cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is at odds with those val­ues. It needs to be abolished.

A few months ago, the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion to do just that. Twen­ty-one Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors and five Repub­li­can sen­a­tors came togeth­er in a strik­ing demon­stra­tion of bipar­ti­san uni­ty to pass Sen­ate Bill 6052.

Although the bill received a hear­ing and a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion from the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, it did not receive a vote on the House floor.

2019 can and must be the year that leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Wash­ing­ton State gets all the way to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk.

Last year, when Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son and for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na joined forces to urge the Leg­is­la­ture to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, The Seat­tle Times’ Joseph O’Sul­li­van reached out to well known local poll­ster Stu­art Elway for his thoughts on where Wash­ing­to­ni­ans stood on the issue.

Elway told O’Sul­li­van that a major­i­ty of vot­ers here in Wash­ing­ton State may now oppose the death penal­ty. As O’Sul­li­van relat­ed in his arti­cle:

“I think it’s one of those things where the peo­ple who are for it, are for the death penal­ty, are pret­ty strong and vocal, but I don’t think they’re in the major­i­ty,” Elway said. “So it’s sort of inten­si­ty on one side, ver­sus num­bers on the oth­er side.”

Our sur­vey find­ing con­firms Elway’s guess. What’s note­wor­thy, though, is that the major­i­ty in favor of life in prison alter­na­tives is so huge. 69% is more than two-thirds. It’s unusu­al for this many peo­ple to be in agree­ment on issue that is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be so divi­sive. It turns out we’re not as divid­ed as we might think.

And that’s some encour­ag­ing news con­sid­er­ing the times we live in.

Any­one who is skep­ti­cal of this find­ing is wel­come to take a look at the body of pub­lic opin­ion research that shows sup­port for the death penal­ty falling across the coun­try. Gallup has found declin­ing enthu­si­asm for the prac­tice of putting peo­ple to death for mur­der in recent years; so has Pew Research.

Pew released fresh num­bers last month that weren’t as good as its 2016 num­bers. How­ev­er, the new 2018 num­bers are not worse than Gallup’s 2017 numbers.

In oth­er words, Pew did­n’t find a high­er lev­el of sup­port for the death penal­ty this year than Gallup did last year, when Gallup report­ed that Amer­i­cans’ sup­port for the death penal­ty has dipped to a lev­el not seen in forty-five years.

Both poll­sters report that nation­wide sup­port for the death penal­ty is below the lev­els seen in the 1990s and ear­ly 2000s. Our polling sug­gests that Wash­ing­ton is very much in the van­guard of a shift of pub­lic opin­ion that favors abolition.

Four states have suc­ceed­ed in abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty dur­ing the past decade: Delaware (2016), Mary­land (2013), Con­necti­cut (2012), and New Mex­i­co (2009). A total of nine­teen states no longer have the death penalty.

With a suc­cess­ful vote in next year’s Leg­is­la­ture to end the prac­tice of exe­cut­ing peo­ple, Wash­ing­ton could be the twen­ti­eth. Let’s make it happen.